The Wildflower Garden

Dr Trevor Dines
Plantlife Botanical Specialist





Did you know that many of our garden favourites, like box (Buxus sempervirens) and Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica) are also some of our rarest native plants?

It always amazes me that you can pop into almost any garden centre, DIY shop or nursery in the country and buy a plant of shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa), but this same species is a beautiful native wildflower restricted to just two small areas of Britain.

It was partly because of this that we decided to launch Plantlife’s Wildflower Garden. It aims to celebrate the rare and common native flowers we probably already grow, introduce you to a few new ones and also uncover the fascinating stories behind them (according to legend, for example, Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) grows from the blood of buried Viking warriors!) We want to celebrate our wild flowers and help you make the most of growing them in your own garden.

We’ll also help you select wild flowers suitable for your own garden and give advice on how best to grow them. You don’t need to let your garden become overgrown and tatty to enjoy wild flowers, they can be woven into the tapestry of all garden styles, from informal cottage to clipped and formal.

The subject is one close to my heart. As well as being Botanical Specialist at Plantlife, I’m also a passionate gardener. I inherited the gardening bug from my grandparents; one of my clearest childhood memories is of my grandmother discovering wild fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) in water meadows on the farm where I grew up. Back in her own garden she showed me the same flowers she’d planted in the lawn and the connection between garden and the wild has fascinated me ever since.

Watch out for regular updates as we go through the gardening year. We’ll be adding more plant profiles to the list and features with ideas and suggestions on how to make the most of wild flowers in your garden throughout the year.

So what are you waiting for? Why not sit back with a cup of tea and explore our native garden flora…

• The Wildflower Garden

Setting Up a No-Mow Zone.

Luke Morton
Plantlife Moderator





"Never ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself" said Eleanor Roosevelt and with that advice in mind, I have decided to take Plantlife's Say No to the Mow challenge by making a No-Mow Zone in my own back garden.

For those who have not heard of it, Say No to the Mow is a bit like a botanical Movember: both involve allowing a hirsute patch to flourish where normally you'd keep it cropped short. But instead of the hair on your upper lip, Plantlife is asking you to spare a small "No-Mow Zone" of lawn from your mower's blades this summer. Then as it begins to flourish, you can download a free ID sheet featuring fourteen key wild flowers and enter which ones you spot online. The results will form a blooming great map of the UK, showing what’s in flower and when.

But first things first: Where should I put my No-Mow Zone? Plantlife botanist (and passionate gardener) Dr Trevor Dines suggested choosing a spot away from the beds.

The grass here has not been mowed since last autumn. As a rule of thumb, the longer its been since you last mowed your patch the more likely you'll get wildflowers. March is a key cut-off month as plants are beginning to sprout for the spring, so any mowing that occurs later could stop some in their tracks.

Now I need to mark it out. Here's what I'll need:

There's no limit to the size or shape of your No-Mow Zone. You could make it the entire lawn or spell out your name. We say the ideal size for a No-Mow Zone is 2m squared, but as I've only a small garden I'm opting for 1m x 1m. Using the tape measure I place a peg at each corner:

With the pegs in place I then apply some string to keep that hungry mower at bay...

A finishing touch: my No-Mow Zone security guard. Would you mess with a gnome like this?

And there it is! Ready to flourish.

Next stop downloading my free ID sheet and adding what pops up to the online map which of the wildflowers pop up.

Joining me and my gnome in Saying No to Mow? We'd love to hear how you're getting on. Share your stories, sightings and photos with us on Twitter adding #saynomow.

• Find out more about Say No to the Mow

Save Our Magnificent Meadows

Posted by Nicola Hutchinson, Head of Conservation Programmes, England and Wales.

If you happen to see fireworks around the Plantlife HQ it isn’t just because of we like to celebrate the Chinese New Year – it’s because the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has this past week agreed to fund a grassland programme of unrivalled scale.  It is the first time that the HLF's UK committee has considered a natural heritage bid - usually environment projects are decided on by HLF at regional level - so this is totally new territory for the HLF, and for Plantlife, and a resounding achievement for the hard work over several years that goes into submitting a bid of this ambition.

Save Our Magnificent Meadows is a £3million programme of meadow and other grassland conservation, with community and people engagement at its heart, to be delivered across the UK.  It is headed up by Plantlife, with the following partners: Ulster Wildlife Trust, RSPB Scotland, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, National Trust in Wales, Cotswolds Conservation Board, Somerset Wildlife Trust, RSPB in Wiltshire, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, and the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership (Kent CC). The project partners are a mighty bunch who have worked long and hard to work out the best approach to the most important grassland needs in their areas, and we are all thrilled.  For the conservation of grassland plants and other wildlife this is incredible news. It is an amazing opportunity for our grassland wildlife, so often the 'Cinderellas of the conservation world' - talked about in terms of extreme loss and decline but often overlooked in the wake of higher profile habitats such as woodlands and wetlands. This time they have a chance to go to the Ball!

The key to Save our Magnificent Meadows is that it isn't simply a series of independent local projects, rather there is a strong nationwide programme of activities to link local activities and to take the message as wide as possible.  The project has received £2.1million from the HLF and will begin in Spring 2014 for three years.  We will work with landowners to restore and create wildlife-rich grasslands; we will directly safeguard over 3000 ha of our most vulnerable grassland habitats and influence the management of a further 3000 ha. Crucially, the project will foster greater understanding of the values of meadows and grasslands by landowners, communities and wider society with over 550,000 people expected to participate.

I've spent the past few days spreading the news and thanking the many people who have helped bring this incredible opportunity to life.  My hope is that one day the sights and sounds of wildlife-rich meadows and grasslands will again be a familiar summer experience for the many and not just the few as it sadly is today.

We’ll keep you updated of events as they happen via this blog, our website, Facebook and Twitter.

WILD FLOWER OF THE WEEK: Old Man's Beard.

Have you noticed a road, path or lane become more hirsute recently? 

In the month of "Movember" its not just upper lips turning hairy: the fluffy seed heads of our native clematis adorn many a hedge at this time of year. John Gerard, the noted herbalist, loved this plant and gave it another common name: Traveller's-joy. Has it brightened a hedgerow near you?

For more about this plant and many others visit our website.

Nature Check: Where is Defra The Defender?

Posted by Nicola Hutchinson, Head of Conservation Programmes, England and Wales.

Wildlife and Countryside Link and its members, including Plantlife, today launched its third annual report on the Government's progress against its initial claim to be "the greenest government ever".

In previous years the score card had a distinctly "could do better" feel.  Unfortunately there have been few signs of improvement and indeed in some keys areas, such as the England biodiversity strategy, the situation needs urgent attention.

Biodiversity 2020 was launched as the Government's new wildlife strategy in 2011, yet two years on progress with taking real action is achingly slow.  Defra niftily handed responsibility for 'delivering the strategy' to Natural England and it showed in Lord de Mauley's speech at the Nature Check launch; Defra clearly sees itself at a distance from actual delivery as all the biodiversity progress mentioned was in the form of Agency action.  Yet despite the best efforts of Natural England & Co it is too often the case that the barrier to progress is down to a combination of Government departments, Government resources and Government policy.  So it begs the question what positive strides will Defra itself take in the near future to make a contribution to improving species, habitats and ecosystems?

Nature Check asks for strong leadership and this is where Defra must start.  The Government Department with environment in its title should be an environmental champion.  It should have conserving and enhancing wildlife and the environment as its core purpose. Its programmes and projects should lead by example and put increased wildlife at the heart.  It should draw red lines on environmental matters which will not be crossed (yes, even by you, Treasury).  It should not be an apology for wildlife and the environment.  It should be Defra The Defender.  Have you got what it takes?

Five "Fashionably Late" Wild Flowers

Posted by Dr Trevor Dines

There’s something extra special about flowers appearing in the autumn. It’s as if they’re challenging nature’s clock and you feel they deserve an extra cheer, putting on a final brave show before winter.

Some plants, like sea aster and western gorse, actually time their flowering for now, while others such as meadowsweet, dead-nettles and dandelions are just flagrant opportunists, getting in a quick flowering while the weather holds out. As well as providing a splash of autumn colour, they’re an essential source of nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies and other pollinators, a final feast before they tuck themselves up for the long winter hibernation.


Five late bloomers that prove they’re worth waiting for:


1. Devil’s-bit scabious

The beautiful purple pincushion-like flowers of the Devil’s-bit scabious can be found in damp meadows, heaths and old limestone grassland until October. This native wildflower gets its name from ancient times when its stunted appearance was believed to have been caused by the devil eating its roots!

More about this flower.


2. Meadowsweet 

The fluffy white flower heads of meadowsweet will often reappear after hay cut and bring an elegant touch of colour to meadows, ditches and riverbanks in autumn when its nectar is popular with butterflies, hoverflies and other insects. In the past, its sweet-smelling foliage was cut and strewn on floors to freshen the air.

More about this flower.


3. Sea aster

Aster is Greek for 'star' - certainly an apt name for this beauty, a wild flower that likes to arrive late with a burst of colour. Also known as 'Michaelmas daisies' most arrived from America. Our native aster - the sea aster - adds a splash of vibrant purple and yellow to our coasts in the autumn.

More about this flower.



4. Meadow saffron

A femme fatale of the wild flower world, as beautiful as it is deadly (meadow saffron contains the poison colchicine).  It flowers in autumn hence another name, Autumn crocus, although it’s not actually a crocus. It’s also known as Naked ladies as the flowers appear after its leaves have died away.

More about this flower.



5. Western gorse 

And this plant will certainly add a splash of colour to autumn, and a lot more! Legend has is that when gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion! Thankfully for all you romantics out there western gorse flowers from July-December and common gorse from December to June, so you can kiss your loved one all year round!

More about this flower.

So instead of the gold, orange and reds that often steal the limelight as trees put on magnificent displays, why not think pinks, purples, and even white? Celebrate the remarkable array of native wildflowers that bloom well into the autumn or even early winter.

A Bumper Year for Blackberries

Posted by Richard Moyse, Ranscombe Farm Reserve Manager

At Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm Reserve, the wood-edges and path-sides are fat with blackberries as the summer draws towards its close. The first fruits are already temptingly glossy and black, while behind them the mass of tight, green unripe berries suggests a bumper harvest yet to come.

It looks like it's going to be a great year for our favourite wild fruit. Perhaps it's just the pleasure of a classic British summer showing us everything through rose-tinted glasses, but I think not. The last year's dullness and wet may have made for poor flowering and fruit production, but it provided good growing conditions for a whole range of wild plants. As a result, when the good weather arrived, there was plenty of energy to put into making flowers.

Earlier in the year, Ranscombe's woodlands were a mass of living colour, as orchids and other flowers had a jamboree. That the brambles were also fit and vigorous was obvious in midsummer, as their prickly, arching stems romped across paths and tracks, making it necessary to be out with the strimmer much earlier than in most years. Brambles are nothing if not mobile: questing stems spread out from the centre of the plant, and, where the stem-tips touch the ground, they root to eventually form a tangled, impenetrable mass.

Impenetrable to us, that is, for the dense, thorny cover is a great place for nesting birds such as wrens and long-tailed tits, as well as for small mammals. Young trees, too, if not completely swamped, can grow up through the bramble patch, safely protected from the predations of deer.

The other key to the mobility of brambles is, of course, the thing we love most about them: blackberries. The sweet, juicy berries (more accurately, a blackberry isn't technically a berry, but an aggregrate of many small fruits called drupelets, each with a single seed) are eaten by blackbirds, thrushes and other birds, which unwittingly carry and eventually pop out the seeds some at distance from the parent plant. The droppings in badger latrine pits are often stained dark at this time of year, as the animals fill themselves with as many blackberries as they can find, and the fruit is also popular with foxes, voles, mice and dormice. Even insects like butterflies and wasps will come to damaged fruit to sip at the juices.

It's known that Neolithic people ate blackberries around 5000 years ago, so going blackberrying to make jam, or blackberry vinegar or (a personal favourite) blackberry and apple pie is continuing a tradition as old - if not older - than any other. Brambles are so widespread in countryside and town that they are available to almost anyone for the price of a pleasant hour and a few scratches. So why not grab a bag or plastic tub and head out to your nearest bramble patch and play a small part in an ancient association between people and an indomitable wild plant?

Counting Orchids in North Wales

Posted by Dr Trevor Dines, Plantlife Cymru Conservation Manager

Last Saturday we held a little event in partnership with

the North Wales Wildlife Trust (NWWT) in the village hall at Clynnog Fawr, just below our Caeau Tan y Bwlch reserve in Gwynedd. The idea was to raise the profile of the reserve amongst the local community. I gave a talk about meadows in general, looking at their sad demise and the species we’ve lost, such as Globeflower, as a result. As Caeau Tan y Bwlch is the Coronation Meadow for Gwynedd I showed some slides from the launch of this project at Highgrove and went on to illustrate the botanical interest at the reserve. Rob Booth from NWWT then gave a talk about management of the reserve, which was followed by tea, cake and sandwiches. We had a great turn-out from the local community, many of whom didn’t know about the reserve. There were also Plantlife members, NWWT members, and we made a few new members too.

In the afternoon, we made our way up to the “fields below the mountain pass” (the translation of the reserve name) for the annual count of Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha), the main feature of the reserve. Rob and I were not quite sure how to organise so many volunteers – 26 in total – we’d never had so many before! We started out with a tour of the fields, where I pointed out the main flowers to be found. There were Meadow Buttercups, Heath Spotted Orchids, Yellow Rattle, Northern Marsh Orchid, Eyebrights of various types and Lady’s-mantle. I love the latin name for this last one, Alchemilla, as it means “little alchemist” and was named for the pure water that collects in the leaves, used by alchemists in their attempts to turn base metals into gold.  We also looked at meadow grasses such as Crested Dog’s-tail, Yorkshire Fog and Sweet Vernal Grass, which gives hay its sweet scent.

For the orchid count I organised everyone along the edge of each field an equal distance apart and, with a rather military approach, got them all to “sweep” the meadow in one line, tallying up orchids as they went. It’s always slightly hap-hazard, with some parts of the line getting ahead of the others and some people veering off towards their neighbours. It’s amazing how territorial people get about the orchids they’re meant to count and good-natured arguments always break out.

After a lot of counting and tallying-up, and a bit of bickering, we reached a grand total of 1,982 Greater Butterfly Orchids in all – 450 more than last year. 

I love the way it varies each year. There are eight fields with Butterfly Orchids and each has a different character; some have shorter grass and more orchids, others are damper with more marsh orchids, others have longer grass and fewer flowers. Two fields had more than twice as many Butterfly orchids than last year, another had nearly half as many. The reasons are inexplicable, the wonderful mystery of orchids. 

It was a great day and a big success, especially in getting the local community more involved at the reserve. We need to tackle bracken encroachment within some of the fields, so hopefully we can get some more volunteers to help out with this too.

Trevor

Road Verge Campaign: The Cutting Edge update

Its always heart-warming to log on to good news. So thank you Liz Anderson for the following message and photograph posted on our Facebook page:

This is a fabulous example of Central Beds. Road Verge Nature Reserves - such an improvement on last years cutting regime they look fantastic and deserve a well done:

We can't help but agree.

We've also received praise for Isle of Wight Council and South Derbyshire District Council. And there was also this lovely tweet from Carl Cornish:

@cornishca: @Love_plants Photo of common spotted orchids on Notified Road Verge at Eaton Wood, Notts:

Alas, according to Steve James, all was not well elsewhere in Nottinghamshire:

@stevejamesPCC: Upper Broughton's top green planted as a wildflower meadow in 2000 was strimmed completely Saturday morning.

And it was happening on the road verges too:

 

Now this is not to take away from the good work that is evidently being done at Eaton Wood Notified Road Verge. But it does beg the question: should a road verge have to be designated as "Notified" or a reserve in order for it to be managed with a bit more care for our wildlife? Please let us know your thoughts in the Comments below.

Elsewhere we received complaints about Leeds and Worcestershire County Councils:

@WildlifeofLeeds: @Love_plants @leedscc mowing down 1000s of meadow buttercups right now on Roundhay Ring Road


@Blacklaceknits: @Love_plants lovely wild verges along A456 being mown to ground level by Worcestershire County Council. Very disappointing.

And some more "Before and After" images to add to our Gallery of Shame: 

Susie Clark on Facebook: I am currently staying in Staffordshire and on way to Fradley South shops from Fradley village witnessed the decimation of a wildflower meadow into a green flattened area.

Before:

After:

But let's end on a more positive note. We received the following image from Charlie Bloom, of a wild flower garden she created to raise awareness of our meadow and road verge flora. It won the RHS Bronze Medal winning Show Garden at BBC Gardeners World Live.

 

Let's hope the message is getting through. As always you can sign the petition and rate your council on the campaign homepage.

Flowers on the Edge

Posted by Dr Trevor Dines

Plantlife launched our campaign ‘Flowers on the Edge’ yesterday morning on BBC Breakfast… and the response has been terrific. But one in particular interested me – it was from Mike Jones at the Local Government Association quoted on the BBC website.

"However, councils must strike the right balance between road safety and wildlife," he said.

We agree, and many do already.

"Keeping road verges well maintained ensures that motorists have a good line of sight and allows pedestrians to walk more safely alongside busy roads.”

Yep, agree again.

"It also prevents weeds and foreign species from spreading into private gardens."

I wonder what Mr Jones thinks of when he says weeds?  Cheerful dandelions – wide open, mini sunshines; round, yellow plates of food for pollinators? OK, we know dandelions aren’t popular with everyone – let’s try again.  How about ox-eye daisies?  Or bright blue speedwell (the name just shows how long it has been on our waysides) or glossy buttercups, delicate ladies’-smock, red and white campions or the froth of cow parsley?  Violets, primroses and cowslips?  Are these weeds or wild flowers?

BUT, if we carry on repeatedly mowing our road verges and leaving the cuttings then yes, you will lose these wild flowers and end up with an abundance of coarse grasses – the equivalent of green concrete to wildlife.

The second part of the point is also interesting – mowing verges prevents foreign species from spreading into private gardens.  Most gardens are full of foreign species – even plants we think of as integral to the classic cottage garden, such as lavender.  The flip of that is that most garden centres are full of what are really wild flowers - foxgloves, hellebores or fritillaries for example.  And of course not forgetting the classic box bush, whiich is under threat in the wider countryside - its natural home.  Here’s another stat – more than 60% of invasive plant species causing problems in the countryside originate from gardens…

But coming back to road verges.  Safety is one thing.  The seemingly wanton destruction of a vital and beautiful part of our natural heritage is another.  With 97% of meadows gone, do we really want to erode the ribbons of what’s left, cut, by cut?  Ironic when you think of the current vogue for wild flower meadows in our gardens.  Let’s join the dots… A well managed, flower-rich road verge is the linear equivalent of a wild flower meadow.  And it’s just there by the roadside for us all to enjoy…

Britain’s countryside.
Save it with flowers.

• Visit our campaign page